Russian aluminium titan UC Rusal convened the first meeting of its newly chosen Public Expert Council on Sustainable Development this week.
Rusal says the Council will be a permanent consultative and advisory body and will engage with various stakeholders in the industry. The body includes officials and experts from many areas, including the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, as well as activists from Krasnoyarsk, Achinsk, Irkutsk, Bratsk, Novokuznetsk, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, and Moscow.
The council is co-chaired by several individuals, including Rusal’s chief sustainability officer, the Dean of the Chemistry Department of Moscow State University, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Managing Director for Corporate Responsibility, Sustainable Development and Social Entrepreneurship at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
Chief Sustainability Officer Irina Bakhtina said in a press release that the council is the product of input previously given the firm.
“The idea of creating a Public Expert Council was suggested to us by activists at public hearings on the KrAZ environmental restructuring project in April this year. Such a working, advisory body should fit perfectly into the corporate governance system. The Council will expand the opportunities for the exchange of views between the company’s management, the relevant committee of the Board of Directors and representatives of the active public and the expert community at the federal, regional and local levels.”
Rusal says the first meeting of the council, which was held on Wednesday in Krasnoyarsk, included a discussion of Rusal’s strategic planning and corporate governance and the relevant documents adopted this year. Among those documents was Rusal’s new environmental policy.
